January
by AchtungBabyAchtung
Summary: Four months on from the end of book six, and Ginny would rather burn out than fade away.GinnyHarry OneShot


He is by the lake.

The world shines off it in the dawn light, and everything seems colder and clearer to her than she has ever known it. She pulls her cloak around her subconsciously, because the January wind is biting through it, and she can feels the drenched grass pulling the heavy material down.

He's not looking at her, and she tells herself that she doesn't know if he knows she's there. But somewhere inside she _does_ know, because no-one was ever that still just because. She ought to just walk away, and she knows it, but somehow she can't breathe inside the castle, and she'd rather die here than go back inside and wait.

But that's the trouble: this is a choice she's making for him, not for herself. She would like to die beside him but her only choice seems to be drowning here and, even though she's more afraid than she has ever been in her life, she knows that she has to let him go.

That's the reason she can't touch him, really. She knows that if she so much as brushes her finger tips along the lines of the long coat that he seems to have adopted in the short time since she saw him last a rending symbol of responsibility, she wouldn't ever let go.

So, even though she's almost shaking with the effort of not doing anything, she'll keep it that way.

She goes a little way away instead. She lies down, and feels the cold, wet grass push up through her hair and around the collar she turned up years ago and never seems to be able to turn down. She closes her eyes as she sits down, and when she opens them again, she can't see anything but sky, so cold and blankly blue that she thinks she could cry. She keeps her eyes open, though, even though the rising sun is pushing a white light right into the back of each retina.

But that's just part of the way she lives now, always fighting against the urge to escape, the compulsion just to run. But she's sort of ashamed of that inside, so she fights harder just to prove that it has nothing to do with courage. She's growing to hate that word, because it lost all meaning the day he left, and she's just being worn out though she doesn't do anything any more.

She fights so hard against everything, the people who are trying to help, because she doesn't want help, it's becoming intolerable, and she can barely make herself be civil to some people these days. And she hates that too, because she doesn't hate the people, she loves them more than anything, and she knows it's hard for everyone, everyone has there problems, but hers are, oh, so unsolvable.

She's been lost in thought for a while now, and when she sighs and peels herself up off the crushed grass, and goes to stand by the lake, she can't see him anywhere, and she thinks he's already gone.

_So little time…_

She's thinking again, _remembering_, arms wrapped around her shoulders to keep herself warm, and she knows just how pathetic she must look, hair loose in the wind, curling out around her face, which is itself pinched and white from the cold and the fact she didn't sleep because she knew he was coming.

She bottled it though. She couldn't talk to him there in the room full of people, professors and order members and the head boy and endless people she never wants to see again. Once upon a time, long ago, she would have run out, and to hell with what they thought, but she had learned subtlety and by the time he had realised she was long gone.

_And this time he's done you over_

So she wasn't expecting it, to see the reflection in the lake at her feet, so, so familiar but so strange to her world. She tensed with the sheer proximity of this man she didn't know anymore, and took a step back because caution is something else that she's learnt, and she won't do it again, not even for him.

She has to tilt her head up to look at him now, and she's suddenly struck by how different he seems, paler, taller, yes, but more than that. There's a scar along one cheek bone she's never seen before, and there's a kind of hardness in his face that breaks her heart all over again.

He rubs the back of his neck with one hand, although his face remains set, but that one gesture lets her breathe again, because she knew then that somewhere, beneath all the fighting and the killing and the hunting that was destroying him, he was still the boy who had swung her round and laughed when they had flown together, her arms wrapped around his waist, whooping with the sheer exhilaration of being on the brink of the wave.

He moves his hand to tilt up her chin, the sense of perpetuity making her angry, because nothing would ever, ever be the same as the first time he had done that, and she had thought nothing could hurt her. She moves back slightly, careful not to let her anger blaze in her eyes the way she wanted it too. He saw the way she was as immobile and cold as marble, and a little wry smile that couldn't negate the pain in his eyes, that seeped through the expression of expressionless-ness that he was trying to put up.

His hand dropped.

'_You've grown up'_

She almost laughed at that, a sort of despairing laughter for something that is only funny because it is too achingly, searingly horrible to take seriously.

'_You haven't'_

And she means it, she knows he is as unprepared and defenceless as he was the first time he left her here, _was it four months, _and that the only person she knew could save him was always being left behind.

That smile again

'_I'm taller'_

'_So am I.'_

He'd forgotten how beautiful she was. But she looks different somehow, paler and harder and so much more afraid than he had ever seen her before. He wonders slightly if she's afraid for him or afraid of him. He has to keep reminding himself that he's someone to be afraid of these days; there is blood on his hands, but to be here again, to see her safe, and alive, made it all a little bit less hopeless somehow.

He's turning to leave, swearing softly under his breath, because he had meant to be kind, meant to give her hope, meant to do something to stop her hating him the way he could see she did.

'_Don't leave me here'_

He almost keeps going. Almost pretends not to hear, but just as he's steeling himself to do it, his treacherous limbs have already turned back to gaze at her.

She looks down at her feet, fighting the urge to run, to be forgotten, and she wishes he would just go, pretend he hadn't heard it and leave because she's so ashamed of her selfishness.

_Where would you like me to leave you _he thinks but whatever he is now, he's a long way yet from cruel and this is the girl he loves, staring at the lake like she can't bear to look at either of them, like she's _ashamed_ to be herself, and he can't stand that, because she's everything he wants to be, everything that he fights for, everything he ever wanted from the world.

He turns back and stands in front of her, his hands pushing her arms slightly, so she turns to look at him reflexively.

'_Ginny_'

Yes? She says with her eyes, though she knows he wasn't asking a question.

'_Don't grow up too much'_

He kisses her forehead, leaving a hot imprint against the glacial skin, and walks away backwards, like a something out of the Middle Ages. She smiles at that, not because the little reminder of the way they used to be was welcome, but because it was just enough to let her gather the strength to keep standing and to give him a real smile until he got too far away to see how frozen it was.

She stands like that for a long time, until she knows, he must, must be gone.

Only then does she start to shake.


End file.
